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Momodou
Denmark
11723 Posts |
 Posted - 07 Apr 2011 : 19:39:11
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THE REMARKS OF NAMs ON THE PRESIDENT´S SPEECH Sidia on Agriculture
By Abdoulie G. Dibba
06-04-11
In his interventions, Sidia Jatta, National Assembly Member for Wuli West made this contribution on the ‘back to the land’ sing song call by the president. Let us follow his contribution verbatim.
“When the president said ‘Go Back to The Land’, the impression is that people have left the land. That is not the reality. The farmers of this country have always been farmers and they are on the land. They have never left the land. The problem is the land. The lands on which the farmers work are infertile and what makes it fertile is expensive and they cannot afford it. So therefore farming does not help them to live properly. You cultivate hectares of land and the yield is very little. And of course the only cash crop in this country is groundnuts, for cotton is out of it. So I will not talk about it. Groundnut has become a liability to farmers. If you ask me to produce groundnuts and I produced groundnut and it becomes a liability in my hands. I need to sell my groundnut to have money in order to buy other things that I need but I cannot sell my groundnuts.
Mr. Speaker, right now you go to any part of the country, there are farmers whose groundnuts were taken from them last year and this year and their monies are not paid to them. That’s the reality; the truth. So we have a group of them here. And that is just one section; one fragment of a district; just one or two villages in Sandu. You go to each village, there is somebody whose money has not been paid for. This year, last year, year before last and even up to the 1980s, into the first republic. There are records for this! I’m not just talking for the sake of talking!
Look! When I stand here I don’t talk for the sake of talking. I talk because what I’m saying should serve to shape policies: I’m not talking for sake of talking. I know people whose groundnuts have forever been taken from them and they are dead and the monies were not given to them, my sister included and the Honorable Member for Sandu knows about it and there are other people in his own village. Somebody there live all his life until he became a pauper….
At the stage, the Member for Foni Kansala, Hon. Abba S. Sanyang, interrupted and asked Hon. Jatta to clarify what he means when he said ‘taken from them. By who?’ He said it is necessary for Sidia to clarify because he is talking in parliament and may be referring to government. And it is clear to everybody that it is not only Government which is a stakeholder or part of the purchasers of groundnuts. So its important to clarify.
Mr. Speaker, continued Sidia, I know for certain that this Government and the one before this government have not been buying the groundnuts of the farmers in this country for decades but there is buying all over the country and it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that whoever is buying groundnuts has the means to do so. That is exactly what I’m saying. Whoever is buying nuts in this country, the government must ensure that the person has the capacity to do so and that the Government should protect the interest of the farmers.
We need to link Agriculture to light scale industries. This is so because if you link Agriculture to industries with the view of adding value to groundnuts, we would be creating income for the farmers and at the same time create employment opportunities. We must specialized in adding value to our groundnuts to become better exporters rather than every year we have perennial problem of marketing, something that is fundamental to our economy. We must start to think from that angle of processing our groundnuts into oil, margarine butter, soap and other items that are derived from groundnuts. Unless we do this, going back to the land will never make the farmers to escape poverty or to live a better life.
Source: Foroyaa
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